Quita Brodhead

Quita Brodhead (1901–2002) was an American painter whose career spanned more than eight decades and whose work evolved from representational portraiture to lyrical abstraction. Born Marie Waggaman Berl in Wilmington, Delaware, she adopted the nickname “Quita” and pursued formal training at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, studying with influential instructors such as Arthur B. Carles, Daniel Garber, Hugh Breckenridge, and Henry McCarter. She also studied in Paris at the Grande Chaumière, experiences that broadened her artistic outlook and deepened her command of color and form.

Brodhead was a founder of the Wayne Art Center in Pennsylvania in 1930 and an active presence in the Philadelphia art community. Beginning in the late 1930s and continuing for the rest of her life, she exhibited frequently in solo and group shows in New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Paris, and Rome. Her early work included still lifes, portraits, and figurative pieces; by the 1940s and 1950s her painting evolved toward abstraction, informed in part by her interest in modern art and later in scientific ideas such as chaos theory.

She taught painting at Bryn Mawr College and maintained a lifelong commitment to expanding her visual language. In 2001, major retrospectives celebrated her 100th birthday. Brodhead’s work is represented in more than twenty public collections, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She continued painting daily until her death at the age of 101 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.